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Crytek's Ryse: Son of Rome "not supposed to be a one-off"

Developer Crytek are hoping we love enough blood and guts in Ryse: Son of Rome that they can grow it as a franchise. If the money rolling in makes accountants weep with joy then we can expect more.

Since 2006 the Ryse project has changed hands, visual styles, setting as well as go over budget, and morphed from first to third-person. Then from gamepad to motion to pad again.

It's like they want the game all about Rome to be as rocky and fractious as the empire itself. "I would say we almost over-designed it, over-engineered it," said CEO Cevat Yerli.

Back in 2010, Crytek alongside Microsoft showed something called Codename: Kingdoms. "We were trying not to show that it was Roman at that stage," said general manager Nick Button-Brown. In 2011 it took on the name Ryse and was shown as a Kinect title for Xbox 360. Eventually it took the form of Ryse: Son of Rome.

"You can't say we would have ever gotten to the point in the game where we are now had we not gone through all of those steps," added Button-Brown. It went from traditional gamepad, to motion control and then back to gamepad with some motion. "Ryse was a challenge, and is still a challenge," said Yerli.

"It's going to be a challenge until it's in the shops. ... When at times certain things didn't happen as I wanted them to happen, I never thought, 'OK, let's put it in stop.' But I had my doubts that we could pull it off in the kind of quality I'm looking at." Recently the game has come under criticism for its heavy use of QTEs.